Schwartz is best known to
the public as the man who coached Leonardo DiCaprio for his
Oscar-nominated role as the OCD-afflicted billionaire Howard Hughes in The Aviator.
But his extraordinary professional contribution, achieved through a
lifetime of obsessive work, is a breakthrough therapy that has helped
free thousands of OCD sufferers from their habitual behaviors,
compulsions and irrational fears.

Considered a pariah among his
academic peers, Schwartz’s unconventional treatment methods draw on his
fascination with the Holocaust, his experience with Buddhist meditation
and his pioneering work documenting the neural circuitry of OCD. By
teaching his adult patients to willfully rewire their brains and reverse
their disease, Schwartz has challenged the prevailing view in
neuroscience that free will is dead.

Veteran journalist Steve Volk, a senior writer at Philadelphia Magazine,
skillfully balances the groundbreaking research of a
philosopher-scientist with the story of a man battling demons of his
own. Schwartz’s most pressing battle may actually be the one he fights
against his compulsions and social awkwardness in his quest to find some
accurate, workable definition of humanity that can help us overcome our
darkest, most primitive selves.